My Favorite Teacher

Sometimes, role models do bad things. Very bad things.

One night twenty years ago, my biology teacher picked up a seventeen-year-old hitchhiker named Jefferson Wesley.

Hitchhikers were rare on Chicago's exclusive North Shore, where kids owned Camaros and carried plenty of taxi cash. Even rarer were high school teachers who picked them up. It was midnight. Mr. Lindwall pulled over his yellow Toyota Land Cruiser and told Wesley to hop in.

Down the road, Mr. Lindwall stopped the Land Cruiser and asked Wesley to wait a second, the spare tire was rattling in back. Wesley said cool.

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Mr. Lindwall shut off the headlights, exited the vehicle, and popped open the back hatch. Among a pile of tools, he found his hunting knife, which he unsheathed and poked at Wesley's back. He ordered the boy to bend over and locate the hangman's noose by his feet. Wesley found it and tightened it around his neck in the way Mr. Lindwall instructed.

My teacher climbed back into the driver's seat and explained: The seat belts in this jeep don't unfasten. Put your head between your legs. I'm going to tape your hands behind your back. This noose is attached to a series of pulleys. If you struggle, I can pull tight from here and control you.

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Wesley now had good reason to believe he'd be killed. The son of a Chicago cop, he'd heard his share of stories, and in those stories kids wearing nooses didn't live.

2

Recently, I wrote a letter to Mr. Lindwall. It's been twenty years since we've seen each other, I said, but I remember you. I'd like to visit, to catch up and talk about our lives.

What I didn't tell Mr. Lindwall was that I'd never stopped thinking about him. While his name had become a sick punch line to anyone who had known him, I still admired him. And I needed to figure out why.

3

Northbrook, Illinois, happens to a person when life is good. The average home costs $340,000; 97 percent of the kids go to college; and when you buy groceries at Sunset Foods, crimson-vested valets scurry to load your car. Northbrook offers gazebos to its picnickers and electronic scoreboards to its Little Leaguers. Seniors who stroll the downtown's winding lanes enjoy handsome discounts on hand-dipped ice cream.

My family moved to Northbrook when I was fourteen. Fashionable welcome ladies helped me pronounce the name of my new street — Michelline Lane — and instructed me to celebrate my lucky transplant into Glenbrook North High School, the crown jewel in this gilded community and one of the top high schools in the country. My personal high school guidance counselor raved about Glenbrook North's high SAT scores and swimming-pool wing and plans for the multimillion-dollar Center for the Performing Arts. Kids who attend GBN, he said, turn out to be doctors, lawyers, CEOs; in short, adults worthy of living in Northbrook.

You've seen Glenbrook North before. Perhaps not in person but in near-documentary form in The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, and Ferris Bueller's Day Off, the films based on the high school by director and Northbrook favorite son John Hughes (Glenbrook North, '68). Show up at Glenbrook North with the wrong folder, the wrong parents, the wrong nose, and you didn't just amuse students, you sickened them.

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Feeling like an alien in high school of course did not make me unique, but it felt so at the time. Looking back, it seems like Glenbrook North decided up front to hate me. My Afro was fucked. My voice was fucked. My clothes were fucked. Even my name — Rob, the most innocuous name on the planet —somehow was fucked. In class, on the bus, in Sunset Foods with my mom on Saturday, just the sight of me offended important students — and at Glenbrook North they were all important. They took to blurting "Rob!" into the air whenever I was around, turning the word into the latest euphemism for asshole. "You're such a Rob!" one girl squealed to another in the participation-counts algebra class I was flunking for fear of making a peep.

I would have given my life to become invisible at Glenbrook North, but at six three, with my gangly limbs and towering Dr. J. Afro sprawling in all directions, that was impossible.

And soon enough, I came around to Glenbrook North's way of thinking. At home, I'd pound the crap out of my little brother because he still thought my hair looked cool or because he continued to dub himself "the Kurs Jr.," in honor of my nickname from the days in the old neighborhood, where people had liked me. I told my mom to go to hell in front of frail relatives when she remarked at a family wedding that I looked handsome, because who can deal with a parent who's too stupid to see what a hundred rich kids can see so clearly every day in school — that I was as ugly as they came?

Against this backdrop appeared Mr. Lindwall, perhaps the only individual at Glenbrook North more out of place than I was. A giant, bearded bear of a man, Mr. Lindwall lived in a trailer, adored the outdoors, and walked apologetically, with shoulders hunched in, as I did. His potbelly was proof that he didn't belong to any of the many area health clubs, and his baggy pants made him look like a kid whose mom shopped outlet and never knew enough to iron. By all rights, GBN students should have eaten this science teacher alive, sent him and his rusty jeep and corny sweater-vests whimpering back to whatever the hell Yosemite National Redwood Sherwood Forest he crawled out from.

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Instead, they embraced him, sensed something safe about him. Mr. Lindwall had an intuition about kids. Before learning names, he divined who required extra attention, who was hurting at home, who needed to call him Rick. He listened for underlying messages, and he understood that sometimes a question about amoebas was really a question about alienation.

Almost immediately, an impressed administration asked him to devote time to the school's "alternatives" program, Northbrook code for the outsider-druggie-loser program. To most teachers, it would have been a baby-sitting sentence. To Mr. Lindwall, it was a calling. In weeks, kids who had been thrown away by mom, by life, by Northbrook, were learning science for "Rick" and calling him the greatest teacher they'd ever had.

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My first contact with Mr. Lindwall came in the training room during football season, where he taped athletes' ankles and worked out their aches after school. When I needed treatment, he taught me how to stretch to avoid shinsplints as if I actually fit in at Glenbrook North. And he did this despite my football teammates' obvious and noisy disdain for me — made it seem as if he didn't even hear them blurt out "Rob!" when I climbed onto the training table. Other athletes probably figured Mr. Lindwall's lack of eye contact to be his need to concentrate on their ailments. But I knew that downward stare. This was a man who ached with shame on the inside, who prayed that if he couldn't see you, you couldn't see him. That other people adored Mr. Lindwall made him my favorite teacher in the school, because if Mr. Lindwall could still be liked despite not liking himself, there was hope for me, too.

4

Able to manipulate the noose around Jefferson Wesley's neck from the driver's seat, Mr. Lindwall turned on the Land Cruiser's headlights, adjusted the AM radio, and pulled onto Route 120. His trailer home near Northbrook was just twenty miles away, but he zigzagged along side roads for more than an hour in order to disorient the boy.

Perhaps Wesley thought of his mother during this ride. He had hung up on her earlier that evening when she told him to stay where he was, not to walk home, she'd come get him. Or maybe he thought of his girlfriend, Donna, whom he'd seen that night. The couple had planned to attend her turnabout dance next week. They were in love.

The Land Cruiser pulled into the trailer park near Northbrook after 1:00 a.m., and Mr. Lindwall parked it flush against his unit's screen door. He stepped around to Wesley's side, opened the door, removed the noose, and placed a hood over his head. Using a screwdriver, he jimmied the rigged seat-belt buckle until the mechanism clicked. It took only moments to drag the boy backward, heels scraping, into the trailer home.

In the living room, Mr. Lindwall laid Wesley on his back, bound the boy's ankles with athletic tape, removed the hood, and taped his eyes shut. Then he asked Wesley questions. Do you have a girlfriend? Do you poke this girlfriend? Do you masturbate? Does it shoot out? Then Mr. Lindwall went into another room to find a screwdriver and some Vaseline.

5

During class one day in my sophomore year, Mr. Popular strutted into my face, preened for his sporto buddies, then announced in front of teachers and students that he'd received an "awesome" blow job from my sister. I punched him in the face and knocked him down. I was 210 pounds, he was no more than 130, and he was clearly beat. But I wasn't done. I kicked him in the face with my boot, not once, not twice, but maybe ten, twelve times while his hysterical friends screamed, "Uncool!" and he was bleeding and begging and microscopes were shattering. In this fog of fury and resentment, I might have killed the kid, but teachers locked on to my arms and pulled me off. Only later, in the dean's office, would I realize that I had been sobbing myself while administering this beating.

Mr. Lindwall, who had been teaching in an adjacent room, rushed over, settled a hand on my shoulder, and used his back to shield me from the jeering students; he couldn't abide them watching me cry.

"You're better than that," he said in a low voice. "You're better than them."

I was stunned. Here was an adult, a man everyone loved, whose instinct was to rush past the kid with the broken face to comfort the kid with the broken feelings. I was right about Mr. Lindwall, I thought as I was led away to the dean's office. He and I come from the same place. We recognize each other.

6

Mr. Lindwall undid Wesley's brown corduroys and pushed them to his ankles, then did the same with his own pants. He ordered Wesley to open his mouth, placed his penis inside, and told Wesley to fellate him. Wesley complied, but Mr. Lindwall could not climax; he withdrew his penis and began masturbating. Near climax, he put his penis back into Wesley's mouth and ejaculated. That done, Wesley pleaded, "That's enough, that's enough, please, no more, that's enough."

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An hour passed. Mr. Lindwall tied a knot in a sock, stuffed it into Wesley's mouth, and taped the boy's lips shut. Mr. Lindwall rolled the boy onto his stomach and said, "I'm going to do anal intercourse to you now," but found that he could not maintain an erection, a disaster because Wesley might think him a neuter. Mr. Lindwall scooped out some Vaseline, smoothed it over the screwdriver handle, and dragged the tool over Wesley's buttocks, telling him, "Now I'm going to do it to you." He pushed the tip of the handle inside Wesley's anus and said, "Now I'm doing it to you." A moment later, he removed the tool and told Wesley he had changed his mind.

Mr. Lindwall put the hood over the boy's head and pulled the noose tight.

Mr. Lindwall pulled up the boy's pants and dragged him back into the Land Cruiser, where he fastened the seat belt and reaffixed the noose. All the while, he assured Wesley that he would be dropped off near home. Wesley trembled and shook. Mr. Lindwall put the hood over the boy's head and pulled the noose tight until Wesley's head was down between his knees. Mr. Lindwall started the Land Cruiser and zigzagged back toward Wesley's town.

Near Wesley's home, the boy began to mumble and struggle again. Mr. Lindwall pulled the noose tighter and told him to relax, they were almost there. But the mumbling continued, so Mr. Lindwall turned up the radio because the groans were disturbing him. Near Route 120, he pulled off the road to let the boy out. After removing Wesley's hood, Mr. Lindwall saw that the boy wasn't moving. He loosened the noose and heard the boy gurgle, but he knew the sounds were not words. Wesley was dead.

Mr. Lindwall executed a U-turn and drove back to his home, where he lugged Wesley's corpse to the rear bedroom, undressed and unbound it, then bent it into the fetal position before rigor mortis could set in. He bathed the body, covered it with a blanket, waited until daylight, then drove to the hardware store to buy heavy-duty garbage bags. When he returned, he stuffed the naked body into two of those bags until no skin showed, pushed the heap into the Land Cruiser, and set out for a Wisconsin campground. He dumped the body next to a tree. By Monday morning, he was back at Glenbrook North, teaching sophomores about mitosis.

7

A few weeks after Mr. Lindwall shielded me and told me that I was "better than them," he was charged with the kidnapping, sexual assault, and murder of Jefferson Wesley. He also was being investigated, newspapers said, for the kidnappings and sexual assaults of two other young men nearby. Rumors swirled about more possible victims, ten of them even, about foster children he'd molested and maybe other dead Lindwall bodies out there. "Mr. Lindwall has a toothache," teachers and administrators told students who showed up for his class the morning after his arrest. Then, eventually, they assured the dumbfounded kids that Mr. Lindwall was not anything like what he appeared. He was nothing like us.

8

After a few days, Mr. Lindwall answered my letter:

"I'll be happy to visit with you, Bob. Send me some of your recent writings so I can get a feel for the kind of man you turned out to be. Let's get together in a week. I look forward to it very much."

I shove the letter under a pile of bills in a bottom drawer. What am I looking for from this guy? Do I want him to tell me I'm a good boy? Do I need him to tell me that I wasn't as much of an asshole as all those kids in high school said I was? If so, I need more help than Mr. Lindwall can give me.

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The letter stays buried in my drawer for a few days. Then I write back. "Dear Mr. Lindwall, tell me when and where to go. I look forward to seeing you, too."

9

To visit an inmate at the Joliet Correctional Center, that inmate must add your name to an approved visitors list. The process takes a few days. I spent those days investigating Mr. Lindwall's case. After all these years, I still didn't really know what had happened, whom he had killed and whom he hadn't, what was rumor and what was fact. I called classmates and teachers, some of whom I still despised, who told me about "Rick" as teacher and colleague. I read newspaper accounts and the lengthy trial transcript, including Mr. Lindwall's detailed confession and speech to the court before sentencing. For the first time since 1979, Mr. Lindwall returned to my life in three dimensions.

10

Rick Lindwall loved being a kid. If other ten-year-olds in suburban north Chicago in 1954 tempered their play with a rich-kid demurral, Rick was balls-out rough-and-tumble, a jumping bean with permanent scrapes on his elbows and knees who capped two-hour games of cowboys and Indians with mile-long swims.

Rick Lindwall loved being a kid until he was ten, when he contracted rheumatic fever and his life changed. The disease, which affects the heart, forced the boy to bed for a summer and caused him to miss eight weeks of sixth grade. For a cowboy who had slain thousands of Indians, this wasn't too much to handle. But soon after, other parts of his body betrayed him.

At age twelve, Rick developed breasts. Not just the folds of flesh you find on a fat kid, which he wasn't, but boobs, tits, the real thing. Around the same time, his penis began to shrink and his pubic hair stopped growing, until the horrified child began to wonder if he was still a boy. Rick ached to tell his parents but said nothing; he sensed that these developments had something to do with sex, and sex was taboo in the Lindwall home.

Rick managed to agonize silently for a time, but when his shame turned to despair he had to tell his parents. His father was unapproachable, a Milquetoast of a man too timid even to select a restaurant, so he confided in his mother, a domineering pants-wearer in a June Cleaver era. He begged her for help and told her he hated himself. She declared it a "general" problem and urged as much to the family doctor, who complied by treating the boy with shots and a pat on the back. When the breasts grew larger, Mom and Doc shrugged their shoulders; sure, there were still "bumps" under his sweaters, but listen, kids grow out of things, why ever bring it up again?

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Nobody knew in 1956 that Rick Lindwall likely had something called Klinefelter's syndrome. People with this condition have an extra X chromosome and a jumble of sexual characteristics and are sexually sterile. A few injections of testosterone would have made Rick feel like a boy again, might have restored his masculine appearance, at least might have helped him withstand what was to come.

At school, Rick became choice locker-room fodder for boys whose own fresh pubic hair had infused them with newfound bravado. "Where's your bra?" "You're in the wrong class," they singsonged in falsetto, pointing him to the girl's bathroom. It was in the locker room that Rick began to consider himself "God's mistake."

He didn't dare allow anyone to know him, because you don't come across a neuter every day.

Through junior high and high school, Rick kept no friends and managed just a single date. Consumed by shame, he didn't dare allow anyone to know him, because you don't come across a neuter every day. He kept himself close to sports, which he loved, by becoming the high school's athletic trainer, the guy who tapes the football players. Inside the training room, he found himself captivated by physiques, and, here's the curious thing, not in a sexual way, because Rick still didn't know what sexual feelings were, didn't know they existed. He stared at the jocks to gather information about what he should have been.

At Ripon College in Wisconsin, Mr. Lindwall rushed Delta Upsilon. He hadn't made a friend since he was ten, but these guys liked him, actually wanted him. When he discovered that initiation included a Hell Week during which pledges removed their shirts, he quit. For the remainder of college and into the Air Force, peers ridiculed him mercilessly with the familiar "Where's your bra?" Had he not lucked into a medical discharge, he might have turned suicide in the Air Force. Instead, Mr. Lindwall became a teacher.

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Northbrook Junior High was thrilled to get Mr. Lindwall. He was smart, knew his science, and didn't take himself too seriously. The administration believed him ideal for that toughest of junior high classes, sex education. Mr. Lindwall accepted the assignment with equanimity, then dashed to the bookstore to cram the basics. He was twenty-seven years old and had never even masturbated.

Kids at the junior high loved Mr. Lindwall, loved that he dug science the way they dug Led Zeppelin, loved the scientific but silly pictures he drew on their notebooks and arms. They told their parents about him, sometimes so fervently that mom or dad would schedule an appointment just to thank him in person. All the while, he knew little about his subject. If a kid asked a technical question, he'd chuckle and suggest, "Let's check the book for that one!" If a student used sexual slang, he'd approach another teacher after school and ask, "How would you answer a kid who wants to know if you can get VD from eating a girl out?" caring little about the VD part but desperate to know what "eating out" meant.

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Mr. Lindwall spent seven years teaching sex ed and science at Northbrook Junior High before getting the call to the big leagues, Glenbrook North High School. There, he impressed the administration as he had at the junior high, and soon he was teaching the bad kids in the "alternatives" program and prompting those freaks to issue their ultimate compliment, He's cool, but I actually learn shit. He also settled in as GBN's athletic trainer. Coaches loved the guy because he'd give anything for the team; they called him "Lindoo Can-Do," because what better nickname could you hang on a great guy who always said yes? After victories on the road, the coaches would invite Mr. Lindwall out to Tonelli's for pizza and beer, their treat, but he always took the rain check. In the hallways at Glenbrook North, students, staff, and janitors felt good about themselves when Mr. Lindwall smiled at them. But when they invited him to parties, Mr. Lindwall declined, because who knew if it might require removing your shirt? Or discussing dating. Folks got the message. In the nearly ten years Mr. Lindwall taught in Northbrook, only three people, family included, ever visited him at home.

11

A year and three weeks after Mr. Lindwall disposed of Jefferson Wesley, he picked up another late-night hitchhiker. Kelly Smith, eighteen, needed a lift to a tavern.

Mr. Lindwall's method was consistent — rattling tire, hunting knife, noose, tape, hood. His application this time, however, was unthorough. He taped Smith's wrists loosely, allowing the young man to stretch the binds during the circuitous ride back to the trailer.

Once inside, Mr. Lindwall didn't tape Smith's ankles. He forced him down face-first on the carpet, then exited the room, saying he needed to move his Land Cruiser. Smith, believing his execution to be imminent, worked a hand free from behind his back and flung off the hood and noose. He could now make out the figure of his captor outside the front door, so he scrambled for a rear exit. When he could find none, he rushed the front door and came face-to-face with Mr. Lindwall, who ordered him to stop.

Smith hurtled past him and into the trailer park's common area, shrieking, "Help! Help! Police!"

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Smith hurtled past him and into the trailer park's common area, banging on doors and shrieking, "Help! Help! Police!" Moments later, a squad car arrived and took the teenager to the Glenview police station, just two miles from Glenbrook North High School.

When Smith arrived at the station, he was startled to see Mr. Lindwall parking his Land Cruiser. Officers questioned Smith in the basement and made note of his appearance — white athletic tape around one sleeve of his blue windbreaker, inflamed wrists, three punctures in the back of the jacket. Smith told police his story.

Upstairs, Mr. Lindwall told a different version. He calmly explained that after he had picked up Smith, the two had decided to hit the bars and needed to return to the trailer for money. Inside, he had observed Smith stealing various items and naturally had chased the young man away.

When officers asked if they could search the Land Cruiser and the trailer home, Mr. Lindwall said, Of course — I am a respected member of the community and a teacher at Glenbrook North and I have nothing to hide. At his trailer home, Mr. Lindwall urged the police to look around and said, I want to get to the bottom of this as much as you do and I am a good person and a foster parent who takes in wayward boys.

The two officers worked from front to back. In the bedroom, one found a roll of film marked boys, which Mr. Lindwall said had been taken during a high school camping trip, and hundreds of snapshots of boys, which Mr. Lindwall said showed the same. On a kitchen chair, one officer found a rope inside a hood. The rope is for camping, Mr. Lindwall told them. Outside, with dawn breaking, one officer spotted a noose, a knife, and three rolls of athletic tape and asked Mr. Lindwall if he'd like to tell them what really happened.

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12

By the time Mr. Lindwall reached trial in the summer of 1980, he was suicidal and had done everything in his power to convince the state to execute him. His confessions were detailed, his memory sharp, and his despair complete as he informed investigators of nine to twelve hitchhikers abducted and molested over the past three years. He advised his lawyers, "Don't work too hard for me; I just want to die."

The state charged Mr. Lindwall with the murder, aggravated kidnapping, and deviate sexual assault of Jefferson Wesley, plus the aggravated kidnappings of Kelly Smith and another young man. Dozens of other charges were put on hold to make the trial manageable.

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Reporters shoved for position when opening arguments began Wednesday morning, July 16. Mr. Lindwall's mother and brother had visited with him before the proceedings, visited so loudly in fact that a sheriff's deputy found Judge James M. Bailey in chambers and told him, Sad story, Judge, I just overheard that man's family ask him why he doesn't do everyone a favor and just kill himself.

Mr. Lindwall drooped into court wearing a V-neck sweater-vest, the same style he'd worn countless times to cover his breasts at Glenbrook North, even during sweltering Indian-summer days. During the weeklong trial, witnesses would continue to identify Mr. Lindwall in court by pointing to "the man over there in the tan sweater-vest." For his part, Mr. Lindwall would spend most of the trial with his head in his hands.

The state's case was cinematic and lurid. The other young man told of trick seat belts and nooses and an abduction in which he was masturbated by Mr. Lindwall four times over twelve hours, with respite only when Mr. Lindwall retired to another room to watch the Bears game on TV. Prosecutors dragged the seat from Mr. Lindwall's Land Cruiser into the courtroom, and Kelly Smith climbed in, fastened the inescapable seat belt, slipped the noose around his neck, and allowed lawyers to poke at him with a knife the way Mr. Lindwall had. Smith identified for the jury the athletic tape, the hood, the noose that still bore his gnaw marks. The state's psychiatrist swore Mr. Lindwall was sane.

The public defender called Mr. Lindwall's mother, who testified to her son's boyhood days and his loose-fitting shirts and get-out-of-gym notes. Among the character witnesses from the Glenbrook North faculty was the head of the science department, who averred his teacher's sterling character and reputation. The defense psychiatrist declared Mr. Lindwall insane.

Mr. Lindwall testified, too. He swore that he molested boys not for sexual thrills but to process what they "had," to watch their penises "get real hard and point up toward their heads" while his wouldn't, to watch theirs "spurt out" because his didn't. He claimed to abduct boys only on weekends because he didn't want to upset their weekly routine, they were in school. He insisted that he had never been homosexual and never meant to kill Jefferson Wesley. Such claims were routine and always false inside the Cook County Courthouse, but from the melancholy and self-incriminating Mr. Lindwall, they rang true. Medical witnesses agreed that Wesley's death was most likely accidental.

The charges against Richard Lindwall.

Esquire

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The jury took two hours to convict Mr. Lindwall on all counts. The next morning, headlines blared from the Chicago daily newspapers, and the city wanted blood. Sensing that the judge had been moved by Mr. Lindwall's story, his lawyer opted to have Bailey decide the sentence rather than the jury. Mr. Lindwall would be allowed to address the court first.

"I have the life of Jefferson Wesley on my conscience, and that's something that will stay there until I die. I would publicly like to apologize to his parents for the terror and grief, the suffering I've put them through. And to the other young men who have had the misfortune of crossing my path, I also apologize and hope that the scars that may remain will soon disappear.

"I am not looking for sympathy, nor am I offering excuses. I believe those of you who knew me deserve an explanation. I also believe there is something to be learned from all that has occurred."

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Mr. Lindwall described his boyhood, the cruelty he endured as his body changed, and the impossibility of living as a neuter, as God's mistake. He expressed relief that he had been stopped when he had.

"In closing, if any of you have a problem which hurts you to the point of altering how you feel about yourselves, for God's sake don't keep it to yourself. Don't get trapped into believing that no one can help. If the first person you go to does not ease your concerns, then try someone else. Whatever you do, don't surrender to your problem.

"Nothing I say can bring back Jefferson Wesley, or get rid of all the pain and suffering I've caused. But, God, don't let it happen to somebody else."

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While Mr. Lindwall spoke, Judge Bailey scratched these notes into his oversized notebook: "He lived a good life." "No prior criminal record." "Bizarre case." Then he announced to the courtroom, "I must say, the defendant is a very unusual one as far as this court is concerned. In ten years as a judge here and four years as a federal prosecutor, you come across very few defendants like this one ... Considering the factors involved here, I have no alternative but to sentence the defendant to the Illinois penitentiary on the murder charge for natural life without parole, and sixty years on the other charges, all to run concurrent. That's it."

Expressionless, Mr. Lindwall gathered his papers just as he had after biology class, waited a moment to make sure no one needed him, then disappeared into the Illinois penal system. He was thirty-six years old.

13

I'm thirty-six years old. Today, I go to see Mr. Lindwall.

The mustard stone walls at the Joliet Correctional Center have stood sentry over 140 years of broken men. The prison, landscaped in pillowy bales of barbed wire, will hold Mr. Lindwall until he dies.

At the sign-in counter, a guard checks a list for my name and informs me that, whoa, the dude I'm here to see never gets any visitors. He points me to a locker for my belongings, then searches me in a no-man's holding zone to make sure I'm not stashing anything in my hair or between my toes--visitors are not allowed to bring anything, not even a pencil, into a visit. I'm moved to a waiting area that sells ice cream sandwiches and Joliet Correctional Center T-shirts, then stamped on the hand with an ultraviolet blotch and led through two sets of iron doors and into the visiting room.

I search for the bushy-bearded, 240-pound teacher, but he's not among the tattooed convicts, their weary-faced women, or yelping kids. Only one man sits alone in this room, but he's got a neatly trimmed gray beard and weighs no more than 160 pounds. He wears his prison-issue blue shirt looser than the other prisoners, and he has kind eyes. Mr. Lindwall and I shake hands.

If I hadn't been caught, I would have turned into another Gacy."

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He apologizes for not remembering me. I'm nervous and can only muster a dopey "Wow, you look great." He says he's in the best shape of his life, jogs every day and lifts weights like this, he says, hoisting two invisible dumbbells and grinning. We sit on bolted-down stools at opposite ends of a pizza-sized table. He fills me in on the incidentals of his everyday life. His day always begins with a hot chocolate, then six hours of laundry folding before working crossword puzzles, the harder the better. He resents Oprah for asking guests, "How did that make you feel?" since he's discovered that nothing "makes" you feel any way — you decide how to feel.

Mr. Lindwall is polite and gracious, but then he turns to me. "Why are you interested in me?" he asks. For a moment, I strain to recapture the sophisticated explanations I'd rehearsed in the car. Instead, I blurt out, "Was I wrong to like you?"

"You weren't wrong," he says after long consideration. "I was a good teacher and sometimes I was a good person. I did a lot of good things. But I led two separate lives."

"Why did you do it?" I ask.

And then he begins telling me about his crimes.

"I'm not homosexual. These weren't sex crimes. I did them to ... satisfy my curiosity," he says. "The newspapers said that I never touched any of my foster children. Well, that's not true. And I did other ... things ... that didn't, let's say, come out completely. If you think someone like me starts committing crimes when he's thirty-one, you're wrong. These things go back a long, long way.

"Did you know I had already resigned from Glenbrook North before I got caught? I did that because I was going to hurt my own students. The things I was doing weren't satisfying me anymore. I knew I was going to take things to ... another level. If I hadn't been caught, I would have turned into another Gacy. No. I was going to live as a hermit, and I would have been worse than Gacy."

Mr. Lindwall asks if I remember his trial. I tell him that I'd read the papers and, like everyone else, admired his speech to the court.

"That speech was bullshit," Mr. Lindwall says softly. "I remember believing it at the time — I'm not saying I purposely lied. But I had no feeling for my victims, nothing. It took me years in here before I felt anything for victims, mine or anyone else's.

"Remember Sporto Hall? I remember once, this very sensitive kid walked down Sporto Hall and the jocks were merciless, teasing him, and when this guy came back he was in tears. I embraced him, tried to comfort him. I felt so bad for the kid, I just wanted to ease his pain. But even then, at the very moment I was comforting him, I also wanted to hurt him."

After a while, a guard pokes me and says time's up. Mr. Lindwall apologizes for focusing so much on his crimes and says that he'd like me to come back, so perhaps we can get to know each other better. I am a little disoriented and react by trying to buy him a Mountain Dew for the road. He smiles and says, No thanks, it's not allowed. Mr. Lindwall shakes my hand as I leave. "I feel like you came here for a reason," he says. "I'm not very religious, so I don't mean this religiously. But I feel like you showed up, I mean right now, at this time, for a purpose. I don't know the purpose, but I appreciate it."

I'm numb as I pull onto the snowy expressway, back to Northbrook, the place I despised, so of course it's where I now live, and I'm wondering what I have discovered about Mr. Lindwall. Wondering if this is finally over for me. My mind is full and racing, skimming across the surface of the experience like a smooth stone. Is it possible to reconcile fond feelings for someone who had been such a positive influence yet had turned out to be capable of such evil? It happens all the time, I suppose — adults in positions of responsibility betraying impressionable children, sometimes much worse. How is a kid supposed to process that? And I'm driving and thinking about our conversation, about his laundry detail and Oprah and undiscovered crimes and crimes that had been planned and not executed, combing, combing for clues. And then suddenly, halfway between prison and home, I take my foot off the accelerator and the car drifts slowly over to the icy shoulder.

"Still a good guy."

Eighteen-wheelers blast by, sending up the snow in a dirty swirl, as I sit there staring straight ahead, engine running. I'm thinking about the sensitive student Mr. Lindwall had comforted yet wanted to hurt.